Off The Sauce
ISSUE 18 [248g Per Serving]
My friend and I have a joke. It’s about what happens when you die. Instead of conventional purgatory, you’re made to sit down and watch a highlight reel of everything you’ve ever lost. Clip after clip. Lost item after lost item. Safe to say, mine would be a marathon sitting.
When you’re partial to sinking a few cold ones, losing stuff is habitual. You wouldn’t believe the number of things I’ve lost. On one particularly bleak occasion, I traipsed around Glasgow asking if anyone had found a bag with a laptop in it.
“What time were you here?” they asked.
“I’m not sure I was,” I said. I just knew I’d been in the general area, so I was hitting every pub nearby to see if I’d been there.
Of course, a booze-fuelled existence stands to lose you more than a few easily replaceable possessions.
Because in my experience, what alcoholism really does is steal the present from you. It’s an endless cycle of fretting about upcoming drinking, drinking, and then worrying about having drunk.
The consequences of what you did — or what you might do in future — colour your everyday, preoccupying your mind until you’ve become a kind of automaton, sleepwalking through life to the next beer-stained calamity.
I said goodbye to all that three years ago today.
I won’t pretend I haven’t lost anything since. But what I’ve gained has been immeasurable.
If you want to talk, my messages are always open.
Happy 2026.